When you visit Jay Cooke State Park, it’s likely that you’ll end up visiting Swinging Bridge Falls, which is an interesting waterfall viewed from what else but a swinging bridge. And yet there’s another waterfall in the park that you may not know to look for: Oldenburg Point Cascades.

I have to admit, though, that this might be a waterfall for only those really excited to see named waterfalls. It’s partly because it’s not particularly easy to see these Cascades. I would almost even describe them as rapids, except that some of these drops on the St. Louis River are more than just rapids. The picture I’ve shown here is a zoomed-in view of one of the set of cascades, which continue along the river for a few hundred feet. Not exactly rapids, but in some ways the repeating nature of the drops reminds me of rapids. If it were one drop, it wouldn’t be extremely interesting, but there do seem to be a number of subsequent drops, if my memory serves me.

Directions:

I think we took exit 242 from I-35 and headed south along MN-1 into the town of Thomson.

From there, take a left turn onto MN-210 and head toward Jay Cooke State Park.

Drive along MN-210 to the Visitor’s Center. If you stop here, you will find Swinging Bridge Falls. Continue on a short distance to another parking area for Oldenburg Point. (You can go much further because the road is closed due to storm damage.)

From here, you may decide to walk the Ogantz Trail, or just explore the area around Oldenburg Point, likely seeing the cascades off along the river. (I wasn’t sure if there was a way to get down to the river to get a closer look…)

Every once in a while, I go on somewhat spur-of-the-moment trips. I found out that my dad was taking some vacation, so I tried to find someplace that my nephew, my dad, and I could visit. I found that I could get us to Duluth, which I had visited previously and wanted to return to. So I booked tickets and here we are.

In my previous visit, I drove along Minnesota’s North Shore, and we are doing that again. It is stunningly beautiful, so if you get the chance, go! I didn’t drive southwest of Duluth at all, though, and when I found there were waterfalls in that region, I decided we should check them out. Jay Cooke State Park is the location of a few different waterfalls/ cascades. One (or two) is Swinging Bridge Falls.

I noticed that one book actually refers to two separate falls, Swinging Bridge Falls and St. Louis Falls (since it’s the St. Louis River). I’m just going to cover both of them as one because they are both at the same point along the river (separated by a small rock island) and they can both be simultaneously viewed from the Swinging Bridge (which is in it’s 5th iteration, having been rebuilt in 2013 after a bad flood).

Both falls aren’t too far away, and yet since neither of them is extremely large, it means it can be difficult to photograph either portion. I found that my zoom lens (55-300 mm) worked well for getting closer. You can climb over large, slippery (even when dry) rocks to try and get closer to one of the segments, but you really can’t get a good view of the falls up close. Best views are had from the swinging bridge.

Directions:

I think we took exit 242 from I-35 and headed south along MN-1 into the town of Thomson.

From there, take a left turn onto MN-210 and head toward Jay Cooke State Park.

Drive along MN-210 to the Visitor’s Center parking area. From there, the swinging bridge is about 0.1 miles away.